Translation And Creativity

Kirsten Malmkjær argues that translating can and should be considered a valuable art form. Examining notions of creativity and their relationship with translation and focusing on how the originality of translation is manifest in texts, the author explores a range of texts and their translations, in order to illustrate original as opposed to derivative translation. With reference to thirty translators’ discourses on their source texts and the author’s own experience of translating a short text, Malmkjær explores the theory of creativity, philosophical aesthetics, the philosophy of language, experimental and theoretical translation studies, and translators’ discourses on their work. Showing the relevance of these varied topics to the study of translating and translations underlines their complexity and the immensity of understanding that is regularly invested in translations. This work proposes a complete rethinking of the concepts of creativity and originality, as applied to translation, and is vital reading for advanced students and researchers in translation studies and comparative literature.

Translation and Creativity discusses the links between translation and creative writing from linguistic, cultural, and critical perspectives, through eleven chapters by established academics and practitioners. The relationship between translation and creative writing is brought into focus by theoretical, pedagogical, and practical applications, complemented by language-based illustrative examples. Innovative research and practice areas covered include ideas of self-translation and the 'spaces' of reading, mental 'black boxes' and cognition and the book introduces new concepts of transgeneric translation, pop translation and orthographical translation.

In their introduction to this collection of essays, the editors argue that constraints can be seen as a source of literary creativity, and given that translation is even more constrained than 'original' literary production, it thus has the potential to be even more creative too. The ten essays that follow outline ways in which translators and translations are constrained by poetic form, personal histories, state control, public morality, and the non-availability of comparable target language subcodes, and how translator creativity may-or may not-overcome these constraints. Topics covered are: Baudelaire's translation practices; bowdlerism in translations of Voltaire, Boccaccio and Shakespeare, among others; Leyris's translations of Gerard Manley Hopkins; ideology in English-Arabic translation; the translation of censored Greek poet Rhea Galanaki; theatre translation; Nabokov and translation; gay translation; Moratín's translation of Hamlet; and state control of translation production in Nazi Germany. The essays are mostly highly readable, and often entertaining.

In their contributions the authors reflect upon Levý’s thinking on translation as a communication process and on Popovič’s insistence on the importance of re-creating a text both at the surface and deep levels. Examples are drawn from literary translation, technical translation, from audio-visual translation and from interpreting, and the authors point out that translators in all domains inevitably come up against linguistic, textual and other constraints, which, if they are to be resolved successfully, call upon a translator’s and interpreter’s strategies and creativity. The authors argue that this is the essence of professional decision-making in translation — according to Levý translation is a decision-making process — and that translation teachers should help students develop an understanding of translation strategies and of the vital role that creativity plays throughout the translation/interpreting process.

Computers offer new perspectives in the study of language, allowing us to see phenomena that previously remained obscure because of the limitations of our vantage points. It is not uncommon for computers to be likened to the telescope, or microscope, in this respect. In this pioneering computer-assisted study of translation, Dorothy Kenny suggests another image, that of the kaleidoscope: playful changes of perspective using corpus-processing software allow textual patterns to come into focus and then recede again as others take their place. And against the background of repeated patterns in a corpus, creative uses of language gain a particular prominence. In Lexis and Creativity in Translation, Kenny monitors the translation of creative source-text word forms and collocations uncovered in a specially constructed German-English parallel corpus of literary texts. Using an abundance of examples, she reveals evidence of both normalization and ingenious creativity in translation. Her discussion of lexical creativity draws on insights from traditional morphology, structural semantics and, most notably, neo-Firthian corpus linguistics, suggesting that rumours of the demise of linguistics in translation studies are greatly exaggerated. Lexis and Creativity in Translation is essential reading for anyone interested in corpus linguistics and its impact so far on translation studies. The book also offers theoretical and practical guidance for researchers who wish to conduct their own corpus-based investigations of translation. No previous knowledge of German, corpus linguistics or computing is assumed.

In their introduction to this collection of essays, the editors argue that constraints can be seen as a source of literary creativity, and given that translation is even more constrained than 'original' literary production, it thus has the potential to be even more creative too. The ten essays that follow outline ways in which translators and translations are constrained by poetic form, personal histories, state control, public morality, and the non-availability of comparable target language subcodes, and how translator creativity may-or may not-overcome these constraints. Topics covered are: Baudelaire's translation practices; bowdlerism in translations of Voltaire, Boccaccio and Shakespeare, among others; Leyris's translations of Gerard Manley Hopkins; ideology in English-Arabic translation; the translation of censored Greek poet Rhea Galanaki; theatre translation; Nabokov and translation; gay translation; Moratín's translation of Hamlet; and state control of translation production in Nazi Germany. The essays are mostly highly readable, and often entertaining.

A COMPANION TO CREATIVE WRITING A Companion to Creative Writing is a comprehensive collection covering myriad aspects of the practice and profession of creative writing in the contemporary world. The book features contributions from an international cast of creative writers, publishers and editors, critics, translators, literary prize judges, and many other top professionals. Chapters not only consider the practice of creative writing in terms of how it is “done,” but also in terms of what occurs in and around creative writing practice. Chapters address a wide range of topics including the writing of poetry and fiction; playwriting and screenwriting; writing for digital media; editing; creative writing and its engagement with language, spirituality, politics, education, and heritage. Other chapters explore the role of literary critics and ideas around authorship, as well as translation and creative writing, the teaching of creative writing, and the histories and character of the marketplace, prizes, awards, and literary events. With its unprecedented breadth of coverage, A Companion to Creative Writing is an indispensable resource for those who are undertaking creative writing, studying creative writing at any level, or considering studying creative writing.

“I don’t translate, I create!” – This is the slogan of a translation agency called “Sternkopf Communications” located in Flöha, Germany. The translators at this translation agency are specialized in the field of marketing and perceive creativeness their daily bread. But what does this actually mean – I don’t translate, I create? Undoubtedly, the translation of a text from one language into another is not an easy and straightforward process. On the contrary, the translator needs to invest much time and one or the other headache before a target text (TT) finally sounds natural, fluent, coherent and logical for the target audience. Different possible translation solutions will have to be considered, language as well as culture-related equivalents often are not easily at hand etc. Would it not be pleasant if machine translation (MT) was there to help with this process? Yet, despite the enormous importance of creativity in translating, computer-aided translation (CAT) tools are being used frequently by professional translators, not to replace but to support the translator in their daily business. CAT tools enable their users to translate in a more consistent way, since they search source texts for words, phrases or sentences that have already been translated before and stored in the TM so that the translator does not need to translate this text unit again ‘from scratch’. Considering that this process brings about what could be called ‘semi-mechanical’ TTs, the use of CAT tools seems to stand in stark contrast to the importance of creativity mentioned above. Thus, the question arises whether CAT tools influence the creative energy of translators and, if this is the case, whether translators regard this influence as rather positive or negative. In this context, it is also important to consider which fields of expertise generally demand a high degree of uniformity/consistency in translations and which subject fields generally allow for a high degree of creative freedom. Accordingly, this paper pursues two related purposes. The first is to compare five CAT tools in their degree of usability. The second purpose is to identify translators’ perspectives on uniformity and creativity in translations with the goal to shedding light on the question whether CAT tools generally tend to positively or negatively influence the translation process on a rather linguistic than technological basis.